


mine & yours

by CurlicueCal



Series: lightning bug au [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Brother Feels, F/F, F/M, Fireflystuck, M/M, Multi, i am going to need more symbols to adequately describe cherub relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurlicueCal/pseuds/CurlicueCal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: Five times Dirk Strider had to share (and one time he didn't).</p><p>Dirk's always known he hangs on to people too hard.  He's working on doing better.  Doesn't mean he has to like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (5) Lover

**Author's Note:**

> I had no idea what to rate this so I erred conservatively. Mild sexy-times in the beginning of the first chapter, and probably again at the end of the sixth. It's, like. A smut framing device.

When it comes to relationships, you’ve found Caliborn has exactly two speeds: a hilariously obvious sideways _tsundere_ shuffle, and full speed, dead ahead, hit-like-a-Mack-truck.

Today’s a Mack truck day.

…Fun.

He’s past the point of noticing the cuffs, but you still think they’re pretty, gleaming dully in the half-light of your cabin as he twists against your sheets like a snake. Besides, you like having the advantage. For someone with all the emotional refinement of a knife to the gut, Caliborn can still be surprisingly tricky. A caricature sketched in black-and-white rules, with a whole universe of complexity coiled in the empty spaces in between.

Damn, you’re poetic when you’re horny.

By the bed, your computer chimes softly, new message, but you’re more interested in the way the flicker of the light from the screen sends changing shadows over the bare form beneath you. You tuck one knee into the narrow space between Caliborn and the wall and slide further up his lean form, run a hand down his chest, tracing the alien curves of muscles corded as prominently as bones under his pebbled skin. Caliborn’s breath catches, comes out an uncertain, clicking chatter from somewhere deep down in his diaphragm, something like a rattlesnake and a room full of skulls, and he turns against the cuffs again. You pause, sitting back to admire the picture. You’re dark in different ways; your skin brown against his green; human matte beside cherub pearlescence; yours sweat-slicked and scattered with bruises and bites; his slippery-dry, unmarked but not untouched.

You tilt you head, considering the picture.

Caliborn blinks bleary irritation up at you. He curls his lips farther back from saber-fangs in a half-hearted snarl. Recovers his voice. “Why. The fuck. Are you wasting my time, Dirk-Strider?”

Your lips curve up. “Because you’re pretty,” you say, just to watch him flush, watch his lashes flicker. His eyes are very dark, pupils blown wide, the red and green spirals of his irises spun out to fine bright bands. “Fuckin’ gorgeous,” you tell him. “Like something carved out of jade,” –and his breath catches again, wavers unsteady—“Precious.” You lean in close to brush your lips feather soft over his cheeks, across his eyelids, tilt your head to flutter silly butterfly kisses against his skin with your lashes. He shivers likes you tased him, fingers clenching, and you follow the sharp arch of his cheekbone around past the curved frill of chitin protecting his auditory canal to whisper “darling” and “sugarpie” and “eyes like gemstones, beautiful.”

It should be ridiculous—is ridiculous—cheesy and self-aware and laced with irony, but there’s something so open about the soft way he gasps and rattles under you that you’re never quite sure if you’re not coming back around sincere. You feel sincere. Exposed, sharp, like drawn steel; your eyes on him hungry and fascinated. You take him apart one syrupy-sweet cliché at a time, and he’s so _easy_ in a way that’s not easy at all. You don’t even _like_ him, most days. You just can’t seem to resist the urge to solve him, unravel him like a knot puzzle.

Right now you mostly want to get his pants off.

Cherubs don’t _do_ relationships, not really; they’re not a social species. They’re not built for it, not programmed for love, or romance, or even recreational sex. No families, no caretakers, and they’re territorial as hell. You think they have a mating cycle once in a blue moon.

“ _Dirk_ ,” he says, in a voice like clicking stones, and you kiss him sweet and trace fingers down to tease along his beltline.

Cal’s the piece that doesn’t fit; an outcast in a species of individualists; aberration, freak. You know they got picked up by some crazy old troll as a baby—maybe it’s like the reverse of human babies that don’t get socialized when they’re young and grow up damaged. A hypersocialized cherub? Or maybe it’s just Cal, and the logical extension of their dual personalities, that cherubic tendency toward obsession and possession, channeled into a fascination with social bonds and rules and hierarchies.

You nip at his lower lip and watch the flicker of his long lashes, feel the uncertain shudder of breath from his mouth. His pupils are so dark, wide open pits. Eyes that could trap and hold you gone hazy and soft. Hungry.

Calliope is the rule-breaker of the two, you think, finding the freedom to fully create herself in the looser, more indeterminate strictures of alien cultures, the shifting rulebook of social mores. Caliborn… Calib is a as much a rebel in his own way, though he works within the system he was born into, following every rule laid out in his genetics…and ruthlessly exploiting every loophole. Maybe that’s the fascination for you. It’s hard not to admire the kind of mind that can make a circle out of straight lines.

(Or maybe you just like the bone-deep certainty that you can’t break him.)

There’s a lovely kind of paradox to how he’s wired, the ways you can get under his skin. You want to give him every single thing he wants but knows he shouldn’t have, just to see what that kind of indulgence could do to a person.

Your computer chimes again, but you hardly notice, because you’ve got your hand down your alien lizard boyfriend’s pants and you’re cooing pretty words into his ear while he shivers and gasps and dissolves entirely beneath you. For you. All yours.

//Attention, organics, this is the sex police, here to ruin your good time.//

You experience a kind of all-over body clench and bang your elbow into the wall. 

“Hal, what the fucking hell?” Of course, the synthetic voice from the ceiling can’t hear you. Your artificial intelligence brain-clone has access to ship-wide speakers for routine announcements and emergencies, but no audio-video pickups in private quarters. And you can bet you make damn sure you don’t leave him any unsecured connections into your room.

//That previous statement was an inaccuracy made for humorous purposes, by the way,// Hal continues. //You’re welcome.//

Below you, Caliborn recovers himself enough to start a choppy, vicious string of curses.

You grab for patience. Nope, none of that here. “Hal, what do you _want_.”

//Might I remind you that I am unable to hear your queries and profanity and must proceed with this conversation using only my incredibly sophisticated projections of what you are going to say? Please allow for an estimated 3% margin of error in dialectic precision.//

“I’m going to mute you.”

//Muting me would be a violation of ship safety protocol which I am certain First Officer Strider would never endorse.//

And murdering him is not, technically, an option.

Just really appealing.

Gritting your teeth, you drop your head down onto Caliborn’s shoulder. This is a bad decision because it puts you within striking range of a very frustrated cherub for whom you are the only viable target in the room. You sit back up. Your hair is in your eyes.

Caliborn hisses at you, jerking restlessly against the cuffs. His pupils are contracting, his irises starting to spin. “Dirk-human. _Do something_. Now.”

“What would you recommend?”

“Murder.”

Aw, it’s nice you have things in common.

//In other news, you really ought to respond to your messages in a more reliable manner,// says the Hal-ceiling-voice that is currently talking your boner to death. //As in, any manner at all. That’s not a safety issue, _per_ se, but it does probably make you a terrible friend. If you like, I can supply an annotated list of ways your friendship performance is substandard.//

You stare at the wall in front of you and contemplate the probability that you are never going to get laid.

As if to confirm the point, someone knocks on the hatch to your cabin.

“Dirk?” Roxy calls.

“ _No_.” Caliborn says.

//Oh, right,// Hal says. //Official announcement: Roxy needs to talk to someone so you’re getting company. Or I guess I mean you have company. Put some clothes on, stud. //

…okay. You blink a few times, like that will recalibrate your dick.

“No,” Caliborn repeats. The red and green rings in his eyes spin furiously now. You let your eyes slide down to linger on the angry flush across his cheekbones instead. You bite your lip. He’s really unfairly pretty when he wants to kill someone. Annnnd you should probably get your head examined.

“The stupid fucking female. Is not important. Tell her to fuck off.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” Sliding off of him, you make a point to jab your knee into his ribcage. “Be right with you, Rox,” you add, raising your voice. “One sec.” You retrieve your shades from the desk at the head of the bed and spend a bemused minute glancing around the small room, wondering what became of your shirt.

Right. Okay. Boner-time on pause. You can do this. You perform a swift mental check. Pants: hastily refastened. Shirt: gone. Hair: …total wreck, wow.

On the bed, Caliborn is snarling a soft hailstorm of promises (threats) in a voice that is apparently connected straight to your dick, and you are so going to be answering the door with a boner, aren’t you?

Well. It’s not like Roxy will be _surprised._

“Strider, if you _dare_ —“

And because you like dangerous things far more than is good for you, you lean back in, quick and careful, and steal a kiss from that snarling mouth. Feel the words hitch and falter into flustered silence. You retreat to lick your lips; find a smirk teasing at the corner of your mouth.

“Wait right here, ‘kay, sugarbear?”

He hits the end of his cuffs and _rattles_ like a malevolent table-saw.

Heh.

 _Cute_.

Palming the lockpad by the door, you pull yourself up the short ladder as the hatch swings open.

Roxy takes one look at you and snaps, “Hal, you said he wasn’t doing anything important!”

You can hear the projected voice from further down the hallway. //Since when is Caliborn important?//

“Hal Strider. Rude.”

//Sorry, Mom,// the voice chimes, insincerely.

Ugh. He knows you hate it when he calls her that. Which is, of course, exactly why he does it.

(You know this, because you know yourself, because you know your irony, because you know it is exactly what you would do in his situation, in the same way you also know how important it is to him to establish ownership of a relationship with her that you have no claim to, no precedent or prior history.)

You raise an eyebrow at Roxy, rather than react. “’Sup?”

“Nothing, sorry, not even important. I _so_ did not mean to crash fun-times. Lemme get out of your hair.” Roxy bites her lip, and you can _see_ her eyes pause to consider the feature in question, and then the slow up-and-down and she looks you over more thoroughly. The lip biting is not disguising the growing smile. “Welp! My day just got about 200% sexier. Plus ten to the hottie meter. I feel loads better already.”

“Happy to be of service,” you deadpan. But… ‘better’? Your attention sharpens. You scan her face, behind the smiles and teasing, which is just the Roxy version of deadpan, anyway, and note that slight extra brightness in her eyes, the traces of reddened skin around them.

Your brows tick together. “Roxy…”

She claps her hands. “Awright. You go get you some, tiger! I’m out.” She treats you to a lascivious smile and a broad wink. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Hint, hint.”

Your brows knit further together (Hal sent her down here, Hal sent her _to you_ ) and you climb a few more rungs up the ladder before she can go. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!”

“You’ve been crying.” Your voice has gone completely flat now, and you hate the way emotions always lock you down, make you seem colder than you mean to.

Roxy pauses, though, softens and opens up slightly. “Aw, just a little. It’s really nothing. I’m just being dumb today. You don’t even need to worry.”

You’re trying to figure out how to explain to her the vanishingly tiny possibility that that is in any way going to happen, when suddenly you are being shouldered aside from below by a cherub.

“Roxy?” Cal says, “ Is something the matter, sweetie?” You swing to the side on the ladder to let Calliope up past you in the narrow space. It’s that or get bulldozed.

She spills out into the hall, six plus feet of anxious cherub already going into protective mode. She didn’t find her shirt either, you notice, but she did stop long enough to retrieve her gun belt and shoulder holsters. Cuffs are gone, and you have a distinct suspicion about the state you are going to find your headboard in.

Roxy accepts her hands. “I’m fine. Shoosh. I just got mopey thinking about old stuff and came looking for company. But I’m chill. Think I might go hang in the mess hall and put on some music.”

“I’ll come with you,” Callie says, automatic, and adds, “I can make you some tea.” Her voice has the hopeful assuredness of someone who knows the correct social ritual to address the situation. “Tea makes everything less gloomy.”

“Oh, but—“ Roxy shoots you a look, wide-eyed and somewhere between guilty and apologetic.

You raise your eyebrows and give her a microscopic shrug. You flick your hand in a release gesture. _Go on_.

Roxy sighs, the manic good humor draining away until she just looks tired and a little wistful. She’s still smiling as she lets herself lean into Calliope. “That sounds perf, angel. Thanks. Really thanks,” she adds, and you think she might be talking to you. Her eyes linger on you again, fond and open and still a little contrite. “Dirk? Did you wanna come with?”

You glance at the pair of them, Callie’s open concern and the protective curl of her arm around Roxy’s waist, and figure that you are entirely superfluous to this venture. Roxy will be fine. Calliope’s always been friendly to you, but you don’t think she needs anyone shoving their nose in or stepping on her territorial instincts. “Nah,” you say. “I’m good. I’ll leave you two to it.” 

Roxy smiles back one more time and then Callie’s ushering her away. 

And that's... that. 

Okay then. Glad you got that handled. 

You watch your boyfriend disappear down the hallway with _her girlfriend_ and then you go back down into your room to put some actual clothes back on and try to remember what you were doing before your were accosted by a horny cherub. 

Your mental to-do list does not appear to be a topic which has survived said encounter. 

Your shirt, when you find it, has also not survived. 

Headboard’s not looking so good either. 

With a sigh that’s half frustration, half helpless humor, you slump back on your bed and stare at the ceiling. Your life is so complicated. 

//Hey, champ. Smooth moves.//

You pull a pillow over your face. 

//The Captain still needs that inventory paperwork you were working on, by the way. You know. Since you've acquired all this free time.//

You apply a second pillow. 

Your life is complicated and you only _wish_ nobody understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And from here we jump back and swing through some key events before circling back to this first topic again. Slight tendency to Strider-angst, but we'll work our way clear to all the warm fuzzies because I like my characters to have good things.


	2. (4) Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter with cute Strider children, Bro is a fairly decent big brother, sorry for the side helping of angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content note for an implication of past child abandonment, an accidental injury, and a brief discussion at the end of the chapter of the circumstances of a canon character death.

“ _Dave_ , we’re not supposed to touch those,” you hiss, trying to keep frustration from drawing your voice out of a whisper. You don’t want to disturb Bro. It’s not late yet, but Bro came home completely wrecked from his day at work. He didn’t even have the energy to manage a shower. He just gave you and Dave a pat on the head, guzzled a can of concentrated protein juice, and double-checked that you knew where the instant dinners were (in the linen closet) and how to operate the automatic reconstituter (duh) before he stumbled into the single bedroom to crash. He’ll move out to the futon later, when you and Dave are ready to sleep.

Your twin shoots you an evil glare, visible even with the point-tipped shades you both wear to protect your light-sensitive eyes. He’s standing on tiptoes on a chair, reaching for the wall-mounted sword rack. There’s dozens of shitty swords all over the apartment but no, Dave has to be all forbidden fruit about this and go climbing after this particular pair because he is a fluff-brained jerkface.

“You’re not the boss of me,” he snips back at you. His words are defiant but his voice is also soft, equally careful of your sleeping brother. As if to make up for that concession he thrusts his hand forward and closes small dark fingers on the hilt of one of the katanas. Hefting the blade off the stand, his back tilts to balance the weight.

“Dave, put it back,” you tell him, trying to put the force of Bro’s sternest reprimands into the low words.

He sticks his tongue out at you, still testing the weight of the sword in his hand. His eyes go back to the blade as if pulled by a magnet, fascinated.

“I mean it, Dave.” That was closer to a normal speaking volume. Your voice is going flat, toneless with your distress.

“Ugh, Dirk,” Dave complains. “Here. You take one, too.”

Before you can protest he’s snatched the other blade off the wall, tossing it your direction. You scramble to catch it. The only thing worse than handling one of Bro’s prized pair of swords without permission would be letting it hit the ground. The braided silk of the hilt bites perfectly into your palm, gripping you back. The sword seems somehow more real than other ones you’ve held, like it could be made of something more solid than matter. Bro lets you and Dave train with practice blades, even live steel when he’s home to oversee, but never these swords. _His_ swords. The perfect matched pair that’s never far from his side.

Dave hops down from the chair, katana in hand, looking smug and excited and wild around the edges. “This is cool.”

You don’t say anything back to him, just stare, hand still clenched on the other katana. Unhappily, uncomfortably, but perfect form, the way Bro drilled into you. Dave huffs at your lack of response. He’s been wound up and angry all evening, ever since Bro didn’t have time to look at the art project he’d been working on before going to bed. Bro didn’t look at your art project either, but Dave’s the one being a brat. You shoulder past him, heading for the chair he just vacated. You bump against him as you pass, maybe a little harder than you need to to get by.

Dave grabs your sleeve. “What are you doing?” he whispers.

“Putting it back.” You make a grab for the sword in his hand. “Both of them.”

Dave skips out of reach. “No way. If you don’t want it, then give it to me.”

“No. Quit being such a—such a _child_.” It’s the worst insult you can think of at the moment.

“ _You’re_ a child,” Dave says, which is stupid, if technically true. He sticks out his tongue again. “We’re the same age, dummy.”

“Well, _you_ act like a toddler.”

“At least I don’t act like an old man. Or a robot.”

You make another grab for the second katana. “Give it to me.”

“Strife me for it,” he says, and there’s that sharp, angry energy back, his teeth showing white against his dark face as he grins at you. His tightly wound curls are pulled out in little wiry white spikes around his head and you hate, _hate_ the fact that that he looks just like you.

Or you look just like him. Your hand clenches tighter on the hilt of Bro’s sword. “Dave—“ you start, still trying to be reasonable, still trying to be the responsible one, and it’s completely unfair that he never listens to you anyway.

“C’mon, Dirk, what are you waiting for?” he interrupts you, mocking. Grinning. “Don’t think you can take me? ‘fraid I’ll hand you your ass with a side of fries, super-size that, would you like your loser-order delivery or carry out?”

“You’re going to wake up Bro,” you tell him, and your anger has completely flattened the tonality from your voice, only the tightness of the muscles in your neck adding an edge.

“Shadow fight,” Dave suggests, still grinning at you, and then follows up immediately with a swipe of the sword in his hand.

You raise your own sword (Bro’s sword) in an automatic parry and Dave stops the blow just short of connecting. He changes angle, swings, and fake connects again as you go to block. “Dave—“ He tries for a quick flurry of slices, fumbling only slightly with the unfamiliar weight of the sword, and not seeming to care that he’s half-assing the follow through. “ _Dave_ —“

He’s not listening and you press forward into the attack. You’re only encouraging him by returning blows at all, but he is so frustrating and you’re better, you know you’re better, he never takes it half as seriously as you do— “Would you _cut—it—out_ —” You break through his defenses, make another grab for his sword, and he shoves you off with one hand, grappling in a way which would lose him a limb in a real swordfight.

“No way,” he says, sweeping his free arm around to elbow you back. You hang on, still trying to wrestle the sword away, and that just makes him grab for yours. You go down in a tangle of limbs and quiet curses, rules of engagement forgotten, and Dave’s fist connects with your eye but you’ve nearly got him pinned and then suddenly Dave hisses out a sharp, high breath, all the more terrifying for how nearly silent it is.

You fall back, onto your knees and there’s blood on Bro’s sword, in your hand, and you look at Dave and he’s holding onto his shoulder and there’s blood there, too, leaking out between his fingers. His shades are askew—you don’t know what happened to your own—and he’s got his face clenched up tight. You don’t know what to do. Because your brother is _bleeding_ , and you know you need to do something but you’re frozen, your muscles locked in place, your throat clenched tight, you can’t _breathe_ , and then from nowhere Bro is there.

He scoops Dave up, sweeps a probing glance over you—assessing damage—and flashsteps out of the room. You stand where you are, alone in the darkened living room, replaying the last few minutes over and over in your head. Then you set the sword in your hand carefully aside—no more blood on the carpet—and move on soft, reluctant steps to the bathroom.

Bro has Dave perched up on the edge of the sink, the first aid kit open on the counter. In the too bright, vanity lighting the blood spotting through the gauze is traffic light red but Bro doesn’t have his needles out so it must not have been as bad as you thought. You don’t think you make any noise and Bro doesn’t look around but he still says, “Dave’s fine. Go put some ice on that eye.”

 _Dave’s fine_.

You go in the kitchen and wash your hands. Wrap some ice cubes in a washcloth and put it on your eye. It hurts, but in that detached way where you’ve put your mind somewhere else and it’s more like a distracting outside report. Bro would be pissed if you skipped something as basic as managing swelling, though.

There’s a lot of little tasks to take care of. You recover your shades from under the futon, find some cleaning supplies under the sink and try scrubbing the carpet. You clean Bro’s swords, too, replace them carefully on the wall mount. You can hear voices from the bathroom, Dave’s quick stream-of-consciousness babble and the occasional deeper tones of Bro’s voice, interjecting.

 _Dave’s fine_.

You’re glad, you are, you really, really are. You have two people and you need them both to be okay. But you feel—locked out. He was the one being a brat in the first place, breaking the rules when you try so hard, and now he gets to spend time with Bro after all and Bro will be even more exhausted in the morning and probably not have time to stay for breakfast.

You know as tired as he seems these days he worked harder back on the work colony. Less rest, less space, less food … less of everything, really. But you did get to spend more time with Bro. You didn’t mind sharing so much when he was always there where you could see him.

(When you can’t see people they might not come back.)

You’re out of things to do, but you still don’t quite look up when Bro comes into the room. He’s _sans_ Dave, and you wonder if this is the part where you get in trouble.

“Sent Dave on to bed,” Bro says, successfully translating your mumbled interrogative. “If y’all can’t find anything better to do than beat on each other it’s clearly past time you were tucked in.”

You hunch guiltily into your shoulders. Resentment flares in counterpoint, and your hands clench. Not fair, not fair, (but you _hurt dave_ ).

Bro takes in your continued silence with an unreadable silence of his own, before treading past you to lay the futon flat. He drops down on the edge of it, sighs, and rocks up into a bone-creaking stretch. Slumping back down, he leans his weight back on his hands. “How’s the eye doing?”

You lift your gaze to him, caught off guard.

“C’mere and lemme see that shiner.” You cross to him, settling into the indicated place beside him with cautious pleasure. Bro slides up your shades, checks the swelling around your eye with careful fingers. “Not too shabby. You forget how to block?”

“Dave’s a cheat,” you mutter.

“Sure is.” He nudges your hand with the forgotten icepack back up. “But you two have to look out for each other, y’know. I’m counting on you.”

“I know.” The words are small and very flat. You tried, you tried, but you messed it up, you messed everything up, you always—

“Hey, hey.” There’s a little tick between his brows now, and he nudges you with his shoulder. “Kiddo, what the hell. That wasn’t an accusation. I’m not mad at you.” He pauses, tone turned introspective. “Well, actually, I am mad, you both know better than to fuck around with live blades when I’m not watching; that was stupid shit and you are both going to be doing basic drills ‘til you’re black and blue. But—Dirk. I’m not mad at you for what _Dave_ did. Kid can hold his own share of the blame.”

“He got _hurt_.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen when you treat weapons like they’re toys.”

You give him mutinous silence. Bro examines you a while longer with that little problem-solving tick between his brows. Then he collapses the rest of the way back onto the futon, pulling off his shades and dropping an arm over his eyes. He mumbles something to himself and you think it might be “christ, how do I do this?”

The silence stretches. You perch on the edge of the futon. You start to wonder if he’s fed up with you, if he’s waiting for you to leave, if he’s gone to sleep. He needs to sleep. You shouldn’t be— _bothering_ him, or—

“Wanna hang out here with me for a bit?”

Oh. You blink.

“Come on. Keep me company ‘til the sandman hauls his lazy ass back my way.” You can’t see his face, but you can hear the hint of a smile in his voice. His hand pats the futon.

You scootch the rest of the way up, before the offer can be rescinded. Carefully, you stretch yourself out alongside him. You track the warmth emanating from his body, the rhythm of his breath. You're both quiet but the silence is—nice. His presence is (reassuring) —also nice. After a while, you sigh out a long breath and the tension slowly seeps out of your muscles.

He's just—there.

It's nice.

“First time I saw y’all,” Bro muses into the darkness, and you turn, automatically, into the sound of his voice. “Cute little mites. All big-eyed and tiny and holding hands like you weren’t ever going to let go.”

You don’t really remember, but you’ve heard the story often enough. You try to picture the encounter. Bro straight off the prison ship and a pair of work colony orphans doing… whatever it was you did in the time before Bro.

“’f course that was right before you kicked me in the shins and swiped my meal chitty.” The smile of approval is obvious in his tone, even as his voice fades sleepily. “Brats.” Your Bro yawns. “And I had to keep my eye out for y’all after that, didn’t I?”

Here, in the present, he ghosts a hand over your head briefly, pats at the springy tufts of your curls before withdrawing. “You know,” he says, so sleepy-soft you’re not sure he’s not drowsing already. “You and me are a lot alike.”

Your heart clenches and lifts, all at the same time.

“…we hold on too tight.”

You’re not sure what he means, or if you even care. Because. Because more than anything else in the world, you think you want to _be_ Bro.

You curl closer into his side. He sighs and lets his arm fall lightly over you.

“Dave’s gonna do what Dave’s gonna do,” he murmurs. “Just. Have his back, hey?”

You burrow your face into his side and hang on. “Yeah.”

Later, when Dave inevitably creeps into the main room to join you, you slide over to make a place for him on the futon without being asked. You end up curled up with both your brothers in arm’s reach. For once, you don’t even mind sharing.

You all wake up when Bro’s datapad chimes. It’s still dark, feels like night. He checks the message, curses, and disentangles himself from the puppy pile on the sofa. He grabs both his swords before his shades, then ducks into the closet to collect his work bag. His _other_ work bag.

You and Dave are both sitting up, both watching him.

“Well?” Dave says. He has his arms folded over his chest and he’s vibrating, like he might fly off in any direction, at any moment.

“I’ll try to be back in a day,” Bro tells the pair of you, his words quiet in the dark. “Let Ms. P down the hall know to check in on you in the morning. If you don’t hear from me in two days, call the number on the card behind the sink.” He pauses at the door, pulling on a cap. “Look out for your brother, hey?”

The door closes behind him. The sudden absence of the hall light makes the room seem very dark.

He’ll try to come back. That watchful, silent part of you, the part that knows down to your core that sometimes people don’t come back, wouldn’t have accepted any other answer. But he’ll try. Bro never, ever makes a promise he can’t keep.

You and Dave huddle up together, on the too empty futon, and try to get back to sleep.

He lets you hold his hand.

\--------

You’re seventeen, almost eighteen, before Bro really doesn’t come back. You know he's not coming back even before the reports of the aftermath start popping up on the newsfeed, because he left his swords.

Bro never leaves his swords behind.

A massive, destructive collision diverted, the colony saved, and you don’t need any of the damn news reports, or the furious, vaguely hysterical speculation about whether this was Independent sabotage or an Alliance cover up or some third galactic mystery party at work, because Bro left his swords behind and he _isn’t coming back._

You don’t, either of you, really know how to grieve. Dave’s sharp-edged and wild, overflowing with anger and nothing to aim it at. You’re withdrawn and cold, retreating into practicalities, certain that you're the only one being logical.

You don’t remember every word you hurl at each other that week, that day, but you remember, very clearly, catching Dave’s wrist, planting your feet, telling him, “No, absolutely not—“

He smacks your hand away and _snarls_ as he rounds on you. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

And then you’re stuck, stand off, both too hurt and furious and stubborn to bend.

Dave takes one sword and you take the other and you don’t see your twin again for two years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(  
> ...every story needs its low point. promise it's all uphill from here.


	3. (3) Captain

“Fudge,” Jane says, as the nearby impact of artillery shells rocks the walls of your makeshift shelter. She squats lower, shoving the faulty handcom back into one of many pockets in her long jacket. The brown dusters are just about the only semblance of a uniform this haphazard army has left these days. Shaking debris out of her short dark hair, she looks to you, crouched at her shoulder like a watchful gargoyle. “We need those reinforcements. How much longer until the fleet arrives?”

You’ve done the mental calculations a dozen times, adjusting and redefining and adding new variables and allowances. Your words are precise and empty. “If they were coming they would have been here by now.”

“…Right,” she says, and her voice somehow compacts into that single word all the betrayal and resentment and resignation you can’t manage in your own. “Right,” she says again, decisive. Her voice rises to command tones. “We’re moving out. Orderly retreat.” She looks around the front room of the battered strip mall that’s somehow become the front lines, checking out the status of her unit, her blue eyes narrowed behind the round lenses of her glasses.

“Sound off!” you direct. You listen through the roll call, noting the half dozen wounded and the two missing responses, shuffling duty assignments and troop movements and withdrawal plans in your head. Most units are down to skeleton rosters at this point, numbers eroded by desertion and chaos in the command lines as much as battle at this point. Your numbers are holding about even, but only because Jane collects strays with the same kind of unconscious ease that some people acquire mail order catalogs. People trust her. People _believe_ in her.

As a method of troop reassignment, it’s far enough outside regulations that you'll probably both be up for court martials—assuming the chaos ever clears enough for someone higher up to notice what’s going on. Assuming any of you survive this long enough to _be_ court martialed. You don’t mind and Jane doesn’t care. She has a very practical approach to rules. She only follows the ones she thinks are sensible.

“Where are Chan and Karvonen?” Jane asks.

“Pinned down, ma’am.” Bisht sounds apologetic, but in an exhausted, hollowed out way. Reflexive emotion. “Sniper in the roofs opposite. We couldn’t get to them.”

“They were both still mobile, I think,” Hsu puts in with slightly more energy. “And Chan was on a blue streak. Noisy as hell.”

“Sounds like a Monday,” Jane says, dry enough to earn a few tired smirks.

“Can’t be too bad,” Zhang returns from where she’s wrapping Hsu’s arm, “The sergeant doesn’t even have that sword of his out.”

Jane quirks her lips, glance flicking your way. “Our human weather vane does seem to be malfunctioning. We’ll have to take him back to central for a tune up.”

Another amused murmur from the group and she’s actually managed to brighten their morale.

“All right folks, pack it up. Be ready in five.” As the scurry of activity starts, she drops back down beside you, propping her head against the wall, her brow furrowing. Jane blows air out through her front teeth. She won’t leave them behind. You already know she won’t, even before she turns those sharp blue eyes on you, silent demand for solutions. “What do you think?”

Your navpad’s long since shot to hell but you have a pretty good memory for city maps and building layouts. You squint your eyes almost shut behind your shades, picturing it. “Go out and around the back, cut through the south alleys where the narrow corridors will provide cover. Then straight across the parking lot to get into the blindspot; take ‘em from behind. That courtyard by the hotel’s all open ground, though. Have to move damn fast; don’t take more than one, two people. Just you and me would be best.” You pause, think it through one more time, and then tip your head in certainty. “We can get them.”

“Good. I’ll go. You’re in charge here.”

“What?” _No_. “Jane—“

“You said it yourself; this isn’t a job that benefits from excess people. I can do this by myself and I need you here, Dirk.” She must be able to read the rebellion churning behind the stillness of your face because she says again, with emphasis: “I _need you here_. Someone has to get everyone else out of here before we all take the fast route home.”

Your nails dig into your palms and your mouth fills with automatic denials of her reasoning. She’s right, you know she’s right, but it still feels like she’s asking you to cut yourself in two. You can’t even tell her to just forget everyone else, let someone else take responsibility. That’s not how Jane’s wired, that’s not something she could do without damaging something inside herself.

You wish dividing yourself into pieces was something you _could_ do—then maybe you’d be able to protect the people she needs you to and protect her at the same time. You can’t be all the places you need to be and you can’t stand that. You can’t keep her locked beside you.

Reality, as ever, does not rearrange itself to suit your inner turmoil. You get a finite binary of choices. Jane’s eyes are blue and certain on you.

Your palms hurt. You make yourself flex your fingers where they’ve curled into fists. Force the tension away that you can’t release. “Right. Okay.” Accepting the inevitable doesn’t mean you won’t meddle where you can. “But I should be the one to go. You’re the commanding officer; it’s your job to be where you can direct things.”

Jane quirks a sardonic eyebrow. “No, I’m the commanding officer so it’s my job to make sure every task is assigned to the best possible person. In this case, that is you.” Her eyes on you are too knowing, but her tone is kind. “Do you really think either of these jobs is going to be _less_ dangerous?”

You grope for control, for steadiness. You still feel wobbly, like an off-kilter gear that might fly off its tracks and wreck someone at any moment. But you can be what she needs. “I suppose there’s no point arguing. You could probably get yourself into trouble in a cardboard box full of sunshine and daisies.”

Accepting your gesture of surrender for what it is, Jane mercifully matches your tone. “Also, see again the part where I’m your _superior officer_.”

“Oh, stage one little attempted mutiny and she never lets you live it down.”

“I am hard, but fair.” The pair of you open your packs and start passing items back and forth as you continue distracting each other with banter, partitioning supplies without need for discussion. The better rifle goes with her, and you take charge of half her rations. Chan and Karvonen might be wounded—both medkits go with her. Her treasured but weighty tome of Colonel Sassacre’s Guide to the Exceedingly Frivolous Art of War and Other Wanton Buffoonery goes into your pack.

You find yourself staring at the well-worn cover of her keepsake, fingers frozen on the binding, your mind suddenly full of kamikaze missions and swords left behind.

“Dirk?”

You are steady. You are composed. Your words sound very cold and distant in your ears. “Take the spare battery packs, too; you’ll want the range finder at full charge for the distance shot.”

You catch just the glint of her eyes behind her glasses, but she accepts a second and third power pack without argument. Then, meaningfully, she leans over and bumps her shoulder hard into yours. She lets the contact remain.

"Don't be such a fussbudget, Dirk. We are both going to live through this.” Jane’s voice is her firmest, brook no nonsense tone. “And we're going to find nice boys and settle down and have _a million babies_."

Behind your shades, you blink, finally turning to look at her. "...Is that the plan."

A grin breaks across her face, that wild-edged, sugar-sweet smile that everyone in the unit has learned to walk wary of. "Darn straight. Now pass me those grenades."

Unaccountably, you find yourself believing her. Or you want to. Jane does have a knack for raising morale. She can do this. You can do this. You can do whatever you have to. And almost more surprising than the seed of optimism, is the kernel of humor you find you’re now harboring in your chest. Damn trolls, you think, as you watch her hum to herself over a growing cache of explosives, are never going to know what hit ‘em.

You’re still hanging onto those seeds later, when it’s time to part ways and Jane claps her hands and says “okay, boys and girls, play nice for Sergeant Strider and I will be _right_ back.” You manage a reasonable facsimile of your own dry humor (“you heard the lieutenant, buddy system everybody, pack your lunches”) and your face is calm and collected and it almost doesn’t hurt to let her go at all. 

And if your katana is unsheathed and in your hand the whole time then everybody has the grace to pretend not to notice it.

You hang onto the hilt as you get the unit paired off, make sure all the wounded have someone to support them and keep them moving, discuss tactics with your scouts.

She’s coming back. She’s coming back.

And you’ll take care of what shit needs to be done in the meantime.


End file.
